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The British Armed Forces need to stop targeting and recruiting children

Soldiers
aged between 16 and 18 are twice as likely to die on the battlefield,
and have a much higher suicide rate than the average for their age

By Lee Williams, The Independent, Monday 29 June 2015

The UK
isone
of only 19 countriesin
the world that still recruits 16 year olds into its armed forces. The
others include North Korea and Iran. What's more, British teenagers –
otherwise deemed too young to drive a car, drink alcohol or marry – aretwice
as likely to be killedas
personnel recruited over the age of 18. Mental illness is also more
prevalent in these recruits, with a suicide rate 82 per cent higher than
civilians of the same age.

These
uncomfortable facts clearly don’t fit in with the shiny nature of Armed
Forces Day, which was celebrated this Saturday with parades, fly pasts,
parachute displays, and speeches by David Cameron.

If only
the truth was palatable enough to be celebrated. Numerous organisations
including Amnesty International, the National Union of Teachers, and the
UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, have challenged the
Government’s policy of recruiting what many regardas
child soldiers. But despite this, the Government is actually trying to
increase the military’s influence within schools.

According to the Ministry of Defence, in a yearly period between 2011-12
the UK armed forces make around11,000
visits to schools,
in this way being in contact with around 900,000 young people. Although
no one is directly signed up during these visits, they are clearly a
massive recruitment drive.

Then
there’s the Government’s promotion of military values within the
education system itself, with its large number of drives and initiatives
to essentially militarise our education system. There is the Troops to Teachersscheme
which aims to fast-track ex-forces personnel into teaching roles. There
is the expansion of the Combined Cadet Force.
And there is the scheme to encourage more sponsorship of academies and
free schools by military organisations, essentially transforming them
into military academies. All these schemes, aren’t just about increasing
military values within schools – sinister enough in itself – they act as
indirect means of recruiting impressionable young people into the armed
services.

To make
it even worse, it is the poorest areas of the country and society that
are targeted. In just one year, over 2,000 school visits took place in
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. And there are proportionately
greater numbers of visits to state secondary schools than private
schools. Subsequent recruits – impressionably young and often from
deprived backgrounds – are then funnelled into combat roles when they
turn 18, usually in the infantry where personnel are seven times more
likely to die than in other parts of the armed services, and where those
recruited at 16 are approximatelytwice
as likely to die as all the rest. This is because 16-year-old
recruits have little choice other than a frontline fighting role,
because of their lack of other qualifications. Indeed, recruits who are
younger than 16 years and three months have no option other than to
prepare for a combat role.

This is
not just wrong. In a so-called civilised country, it is barbaric.

So what
can we do to stop it? As Ben Griffin, founder ofVeteran's
for Peace UK, has said, if there was a veteran outside every
recruitment office who could tell parents that their 16-year-old son was
twice as likely to die as an adult recruit, how many would let them do
it?

Unfortunately that’s not possible. But we, as concerned citizens, can be
that voice telling people about the other, less glamorous, side to
military service. After all, the Government isn't going to. Perhaps
then, when enough people are made aware, we can move beyond the barbaric
practice of recruiting child soldiers.